The Baseline Conversion Rate, often referred to simply as the “baseline rate,” represents the initial or current rate at which a specific action is completed on your website or within your marketing campaign.
This action can vary depending on your objectives and may include conversions such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form.
How to Determine Your Baseline Conversion Rate
To calculate your Baseline Conversion Rate, there are several methods you can employ:
- Identify the Conversion Action: Define the specific action you want to track, such as product purchases, form submissions, or downloads.
- Calculate the Rate: Divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors or interactions during the same period to calculate the baseline rate.
- Use industry benchmarks: If you run a similar business to others in your industry, you can use average or median conversion rates as a benchmark. This will give you a good starting point for estimating your own conversion rate.
- Use historical data: If you have been running your business for a while, you can look at your past conversion rates to get an idea of your baseline. This method is advantageous if you have changed your website or marketing strategy and think it might’ve impacted your conversion rate.
- Use A/A testing: A/A testing compares the same version of a web page (or other elements) to itself. That way, you can get a clear image of how much your baseline conversion rate is.
Using the Baseline Conversion Rate for Optimization
Once you have established your Baseline Conversion Rate, you can employ it in your optimization strategies:
- Experimentation: Conduct A/B tests and other optimization experiments to improve your conversion rate. Monitor changes in the rate compared to your baseline to assess their effectiveness.
- Iterative Improvement: Continuously work to refine your marketing and website elements based on your baseline data, aiming to surpass your initial conversion rate.
- Performance Tracking: Regularly track and analyze your Baseline Conversion Rate to identify trends and make informed decisions for your conversion rate optimization efforts.
Baseline Conversion Rate serves as the starting point for evaluating the success of your conversion optimization endeavors.
When you understand this metric and use it as a reference, you can make informed decisions, set achievable goals, and work towards improving your conversion rates over time.